I'm not exactly sure what the studios had against this weekend, but none of them offered up any new wide releases. Well, OK, so MGM opened Awake starring a none-too-impressive Hayden Christensen, but by most accounts the movie wasn't worth seeing. So, once again, audiences were faced with a weekend with nothing new to watch.
Frankly, I found it to be kind of a relief. Filmmakers are coming close to breaking last year's record 600+ new movies. For those of you doing the math, that's nearly two new movies EVERY DAY. Who can keep up with that? Weekends have averaged between 3 and 4 new movies making it a painful effort just to keep up with the new stuff, much less try to weed out the crap and only see what's worth paying $10 to watch.
Awake, the lone ranger in new release, couldn't muster enough interest to beat last weekend's top three. Enchanted, This Christmas and Beowulf all remained first to third respectively, with Enchanted pulling ahead of Beowulf in total box office sales. The upside down fairy tale broke the $70 million mark while massive 3D CG animated is faltering off at only $68 million.
No Country For Old Men, which fell out of the top ten last weekend despite expanding to over 850 theaters, bounced back up to number eight. It's not so much a case of the movie doing better than it did last weekend (in fact it fell from $7.7 million to $4.5 million), but the fact that everything else at the bottom of the chart did even worse.
For the full list check out the chart below.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOP TEN
November 30 - December 2, 2007 |
LW = Last Week WR = Weeks Released
THTRS = Number of Screens
* Denotes new release.
Click on title to read CB Review |
| 1. | Enchanted | $17,023,000 - Total: $70,620,000 | LW: 1 WR: 2 THTRS: 3730 |
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| 2. | This Christmas | $8,400,000 - Total: $36,891,000 | LW: 2 WR: 2 THTRS: 1858 |
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| 3. | Beowulf | $7,882,000 - Total: $68,613,000 | LW: 3 WR: 3 THTRS: 3249 |
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| 4. | Awake * | $6,011,000 - Total: $6,011,000 | LW: N WR: 1 THTRS: 2002 |
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| 5. | Hitman | $5,800,000 - Total: $30,204,000 | LW: 4 WR: 2 THTRS: 2468 |
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| 6. | Fred Claus | $5,500,000 - Total: $59,783,000 | LW: 6 WR: 4 THTRS: 3420 |
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| 7. | August Rush | $5,150,000 - Total: $20,354,000 | LW: 7 WR: 2 THTRS: 2310 |
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| 9. | Bee Movie | $4,471,000 - Total: $117,643,000 | LW: 5 WR: 5 THTRS: 3150 |
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December 2nd, 2007 at 22:28
By most accounts, many critics (the ones I read) wrote reviews without having seen the movie since it wasn't screened for them. So they just summarized and made fun of the actors instead.
I didn't know what to expect when I went to see it but it turned out to be a good suspense thriller that had my attention from beginning to end. I hope people will go to see it. It didn't deserve the treatment it got by most critics.